The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 was the fourth edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest for young singers aged 8 to 15. On December 2 2006, the contest was broadcast live from Bucharest, Romania making it the second time the contest had been held in a capital city. It was organised by the Romanian national broadcaster, Romanian Television (TVR), in co-operation with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). TVR won the rights of hosting the contest over AVRO of the Netherlands (who hosted the next contest). Croatia also expressed an interest in hosting this contest.

The contest was won by The Tolmachevy Twins from Russia with the song Vesenniy Jazz/Spring Jazz.

Dani

Originally 16 countries had initially signed up for the contest but one unspecified country later dropped out. Radio télévision belge de la communauté française (RTBF) of the French speaking Wallonia in Belgium left the contest this year after co-hosting the previous edition with Flemish broadcaster Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep (VRT). They claimed that continuing with the contest was not in their interests financially. The viewing figures for the 2005 contest for RTBF were also low. Belgium continued to be represented at the contest by VRT. The show was broadcast live in the competing countries, as well as Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Australian television channel Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) that acquired the rights for broadcasting the show, which was broadcast on 1 January 2007.

Hrvatska radiotelevizija (HRT) of Croatia announced that they would withdraw from the 2007 edition and future contests, as otherwise they would have faced a fine from the EBU as they did not screen this year's event live and did not broadcast it on a nationally available network. Broadcasters previously had to screen the event live and on a channel available to the majority of the public however this rule was scrapped in 2007.

Molly Sandén

Withdrawn countries

The Scandinavian broadcasters; DR of Denmark, Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) of Norway and Sveriges Television (SVT) of Sweden; decided to withdraw from the contest for various reasons, one being that the content put too much pressure on the participating children. Instead they staged a solely Scandinavian contest called Melodi Grand Prix Nordic in Stockholm, as they did in 2002. However, Sweden did participate, with commercial broadcaster TV4 supplying Sweden's entry. This meant that Sweden participated in both contests.

ITV, the United Kingdom broadcaster of the contest from 2003 up until and including 2005, withdrew from the contest, after they were originally given the rights to broadcast it when the BBC declined the offer. In 2003, they broadcast the contest on main channel ITV, relegating it to ITV2 for the next two years due to bad viewer ratings, before their complete withdrawal in 2006.

Latvia also withdraw, mainly due to financial reasons. They have not returned before 2010.

Serbia and Montenegro participated in the 2005 contest, but since then, Montenegro voted for independence. The EBU gave their national broadcaster, Radio televizija Crne Gore (RTCG), extra time to decide whether or not to participate, but they finally declined the invitation.